


Things that were, things that are

by dreamline



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Attempted Sexual Assault, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Castiel and Dean Winchester in Love, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Hurt Dean Winchester, Human Castiel (Supernatural), Human Castiel in the Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Past Sex Work, Post-Season/Series 15, Protective Castiel (Supernatural), mentions of John Winchester - Freeform, mentions of past underage, no beta we die like me playing zelda after three gins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-13 19:01:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29780682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamline/pseuds/dreamline
Summary: But he can’t tell Sam this. Not this. The whole point of Dean was always to protect Sam. But now Sam’s watching him with wary eyes, trepidation and distress twisting his mouth, and Christ if that doesn’t gut Dean, because the whole reason for that, that he ever did any of it, was to keep Sam safe, to make sure Sam could be happy. Sam was never meant to get hurt. And this will hurt. This will be Dean setting a match to Sam’s image of their childhood and throwing them both onto the pyre.
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 7
Kudos: 128





	Things that were, things that are

**Author's Note:**

> TW for discussions of past sex work and underage plus references to attempted rape, though nothing in detail.

“I feel like I should’ve thrown you a party or something.” Sam downs the last of his beer and lounges back in his chair. His hand drops to hang over the arm, empty bottle dangling loosely from his fingers. He smiles lazily up at the ceiling, waves his other hand like he’s conducting his own thoughts. “Happy coming out day, Dean Winchester finally realises he’s bi. Do you think they do balloons for that?”

Dean half chokes on his own beer, squints at Sam over the top of his bottle.

“Finally?” He scowls at his stupid moose brother, shoulders hitching up in sudden tension. “The fuck you mean _finally?”_

Sam snorts. “Only took you forty-one years, you want a longer definition of finally than that?”

Dean skulks down in his own chair, frowns at his beer. His chest tightens in a mirror of the sudden vice grip his hand has on the table edge, caught between the big brother instinct that’s desperate to set Sam’s smug face straight, and a lifetime of pushing _that_ down into the pits of his soul.

He’s just drunk enough for the competitive side to win.

“I knew.” He mutters.

Sam doesn’t respond for a second. Then his brow creases in his own frown as he blinks at the ceiling.

“What? You… you’ve never…” He turns his head to stare at Dean with honest perplexity. “Since when?”

“Since I was a teenager Sam, I’m not a moron.” Dean swigs his beer, movements viciously sharp.

Sam sits up his chair. Shakes his head, plants the empty bottle on the table. Dean can literally see the tipsy haze clear from his eyes, and oh fuck abort mission. He should have aborted mission five sentences ago when they were half drunk and warm and safe, with no worries in the world but if they’d hear each other through the walls when they finally hit the hay with Cas and Eileen. But now Sam’s caught onto something and they’re in for another session of Let’s Talk About Our Feelings, like Dean wouldn’t rather stick an angel blade between his own ribs than ever, ever do that.

“Dean, I have literally never seen you try and flirt with a man.” Sam stops, tilts his head, amends his bitchface to a subtly different variety. “Other than Cas I mean, and I’m fairly certain that wasn’t on purpose. At first.”

Dean, even with a lifetime of practice behind him, barely resists throwing his beer at Sam’s stupid, shaggy head.

“Are you seriously telling me you’ve always known and you’ve never even mentioned it?” Sam sounds a little hurt and Dean flinches.

“It wasn’t important.”

“Not im-“ Sam sits up straight, leans forward to plant his hands on the table. Now he looks properly pissed. “Of course it’s important, it’s your whole life. Your whole fucking life and you’ve just been, what? Hiding it from me?”

Dean’s head twitches. Sam leans back a little, watches Dean carefully. The intensity of his gaze feels like it’s stripping Dean’s skin off and Dean shrinks into his shirt, automatically making himself small, like that could ever protect him when Sam decides he wants to pull Dean’s heart out and examine it.

“Nothing to hide,” Dean mumbles. “Not like I’ve been sneaking around dating men behind your back.”

 _Well that’s true at least,_ his subconscious whispers mutinously and he shudders before he can hold it in.

“Dean.” Sam says slowly. “What else are you not telling me?”

“Nothing Sam, just leave it alone.”

“So what you want me to believe that you realised you’re into guys in your teens and, what? Decided never to do anything about it? Only date women? That’s ridiculous, Dean. Or,” something strikes him and Sam’s expression shifts from irritated to concerned like he flicked a switch. The change does not make Dean feel any less sick about how this conversation is going.

“You weren’t ashamed, were you?” Now Sam actually sounds like he’s going to cry. “Because I know- I know some of the hunters dad used to work with, dad too sometimes, they used to say some pretty awful things back then.”

Dean curls convulsively forward. They had. He remembers that. Most of their faces are a blur in his recollection, but the words are still needle-sharp under his skin.

“No.” He mutters to his knees. “Not ashamed of what I am.”

Now Sam just looks honestly baffled. So like a lost puppy Dean would laugh if he didn’t already want to throw up.

“Then why? What the hell was the problem?”

A voice whispers up out of the pits of Dean’s memory before he can shove it back down into the dark. Slurring drunk, tobacco rough, the stench of cheap lager on stale breath ghosting over his cheek with the words.

_I ain’t payin’ for you to talk. You know what I’m payin’ your whore mouth for._

It burns like napalm in his heart.

Fuck Sam for making Dean bring all this back up. Fuck him for knifing his ribs open and spilling the pain he pushed down into the bottom of his heart at fifteen and tried to pretend didn’t exist for the next twenty-six years.

Dean shoves himself away from the table. He’s out of his chair and halfway across the room before he can think. He needs to run, he needs to hide from Sam so he can box up the mess Sam’s made of his insides and hide what’s in it from himself too.

“Dean!”

Sam’s up and after him in a second. He full on vaults the table to catch him, grabs him by the shoulders and pulls him back around.

“ _We’re_ _not talking about this,”_ Dean growls, wrenching at Sam’s hold. Sam just folds his arms around Dean and pushes him into the wall. Pins him there with a knee and his superior height.

Dean shoves at him, twists against the press of Sam’s hands, grabs Sam’s shirt and tries to throw him off. Panic makes him clumsy, clawing uselessly to get away.

“Dean.” Sam clings on grimly. “We promised, remember? No more lying to each other. And this, this is really important. You’re not telling me something huge, I know it.”

“It’s not,” Dean whispers, but even he can hear the lie trembling in his voice.

But he can’t tell Sam this. Not _this._ The whole point of Dean was always to protect Sam. But now Sam’s watching him with wary eyes, trepidation and distress twisting his mouth, and Christ if that doesn’t gut Dean, because the whole reason for _that,_ that he ever did any of it, was to keep Sam safe, to make sure Sam could be happy. Sam was never meant to get hurt. And this _will_ hurt. This will be Dean setting a match to Sam’s image of their childhood and throwing them both onto the pyre.

The realisation congeals slowly in Dean’s chest all the same. There’s no getting away from this. Sam’s caught onto a loose thread and he won’t stop pulling until Dean relents or until Dean’s whole being unravels.

“Dean.” Sam repeats. He doesn’t say anything else, and that’s somehow worse than his questioning, his expectant eyes more cutting than his probing words.

Dean twines his fingers into Sam’s shirt, grips tight. The creases of the flannel press into his fingers, the dull pain a grounding against the dizzying swell of recollection rising from the farthest depths of his memory.

“Women were… I could always choose.” Dean’s grip on Sam’s shirt tightens until his knuckles go white. His fingers numb. He stares at them instead of Sam’s face. He cannot bear even the thought of Sam’s face. The words won’t come out if he looks, so he fixes his eyes on his own hand and pries them out like he’s digging bullets out of his wounds with his fingers. “I never _had to_ with women. Men, for so long it was always. Not. I had to. I didn’t get to.” He stops. Gulps down the nausea.

“Dad didn’t leave enough. Sometimes.” He whispers finally. His voice is so quiet he can barely hear it himself. “I- I- didn’t. I had to. To keep you safe.”

“To-“ Sam’s grip on Dean loosens. “Dad didn’t- and you… You had to?” Sam says blankly.

Dean shrinks against the wall. The cold of the stone is all too similar to other walls from lifetimes ago and his body shudders viscerally. He pulls in a breath. It catches in his throat like a sob.

Somehow it’s that tiny noise that brings the crushing understanding of Dean’s confession down on Sam’s head.

“ _No._ ” Sam’s voice is barely more than a breath. His hands clench around Dean’s arms. “No, Dean, tell me that’s not-“

Sam’s sentence dies in the space between them. It stains the air with its withering, seeps the air out of Sam and the strength out of his spine. His hands loosen on Dean’s shirt and he sags forward, sinking until his forehead drops into Dean’s hair. Dean shivers under the contact, nerves screaming to pull away. Distantly in the back of his mind he registers how fucked that is, that his subconscious won’t even trust his own brother, won’t even trust Sam, not to turn touch into violence.

For a few hanging minutes Sam leans on Dean, unmoving, breath unsteady in Dean’s hair, and Dean holds himself taut, muscles pulled tense and skin stretched thin over raw nerves. Finally Sam exhales hard and drags himself halfway upright. His hand brushes up Dean’s bicep and Dean fists his hands even tighter into Sam’s shirt to hold himself still, waits for Sam to speak.

“When was the first time?” Sam sounds so calm. He voice is so even, level. Flat as a lake on a calm day. So still it makes Dean flinch away, startling from the anger he expected that isn’t here. Sam steadies him with the flat of a hand against his chest. Repeats. “Dean? The first time?”

“I don’t remember.” The denial is automatic. Defence. Sam doesn’t buy it for one millisecond. He closes his eyes for a beat, jaw working. His hand presses more firmly into Dean’s chest.

“You do.” Clipped. Weary.

Dean closes his eyes too. The inside of his eyelids might as well be a cinema screen, the clarity of the moment is so sharp. The broken sink in the corner, the single flickering yellow lightbulb overhead. The fractured tiles with the mouldy, dirty grout. The press of concrete against his knees. The accuracy of recollection undimmed by two and a half decades.

“I.. you…” Dean hisses in a breath. Forces his eyes open. He can’t say this when it’s replaying in his mind’s eye in high definition. “We were in Wyoming. Some podunk town. Dad’s money ran out. You were hungry and crying, and I couldn’t find anything to steal, and I didn’t have anything else to sell.”

Sam’s hand latches onto Dean’s shoulder. “We were in Wyoming a lot, Dean.” This time there’s an undercurrent to the words. A tremor. A foreshock of the coming earthquake. Dean gives up trying to prevent it. Sam will be furious either way. There’s no point hiding this. Sam will wheedle it out of him sooner or later, and he’s too tired to evade his probing. He drops his head instead, tucks it under Sam’s arm and leans into him. He feels more than hears Sam’s startled inhalation, but he starts talking before Sam can open his mouth.

“That winter Dad disappeared for a month.” It comes out monotone, emotionless. “Left us in some fucking hellhole motel while he went off hunting a wendigo pack on Wind River reservation.”

There’s a pause. He can _feel_ Sam thinking against his forehead where it rests on Sam’s chest. The quiet ticking of Sam’s memory as he flicks back through his files. An unconscious grenade ticking down.

He knows Sam’s got it when his spine shoots up straight, his while body turning stiff against Dean’s own.

“February 93? The winter I got the flu?”

Dean doesn’t have to respond. The shudder that racks him gives Sam all the answer he needs. Sam’s hands clench, tugging him in even closer.

“Dean, you were fucking _fourteen years old.”_

Dean’s whole body curls in around the words. He knows that, fuck, of _course_ he knows that but he _had to_ , he didn’t have a choice, it was _Sam,_ there was nothing else he _could_ do.

“I, Dean I didn’t,” Sam is clinging onto him, hands pulling at Dean’s flannel, clutching him so hard against Sam’s chest it crushes the air from his lungs, “I didn’t _know,_ christ I…”

“Of course you didn’t know!” Dean shoves at Sam’s hands, swallows around the thick sickness in his throat, “I made _sure_ you didn’t know, you think I wanted you carrying something like that?” Tears prick at his eyes and he scrubs them away with a furious fist. “You were a fucking kid, ten years old, of _course_ I-”

“You were a kid too!” Sam grabs hold of Dean’s hands and holds them against his chest. “When I was laid up in bed bitching about running out of painkillers, and wanting noodle soup instead of the tomato we had. And you went out to buy supplies. That’s where you went? That’s why you took so long?”

Dean doesn’t reply, just turns his head away. That’s all the confirmation Sam needs. Sam swears softly, the guilt heavy in his voice, and the ache in Dean’s heart for not being able to lie well enough to protect Sam from this is so vicious he wants to claw his own ribs open just to get it out of him.

“And I fucking _whined_ when you got back that you’d left me alone so long,” Sam’s shoulders slump. “Jesus Dean, I am so-“

Sam stops. His eyes go huge. Dean can literally see a realisation surfacing across his face in a bloom of horror. When he speaks, it’s like his voice is coming from a long way away.

“You came back with bruises.”

Dean’s stomach clenches. Fuck, he’d hoped Sam had forgotten that part.

“You told me a guy tried to mug you.”

Dean shrugs one shoulder stiffly. “He didn’t want to pay. I made him. Learnt my lesson. Cash up front.”

Sam slumps even more. Palms his eye with the heel of his hand, shudders. The details make it real for Sam, Dean realises belatedly. At first, it was just a concept. A vast _thing_ that had happened, heavy and horrifying, but too amorphous to really cut. The bleak specifics give it claws.

Sam suddenly sucks in a harsh breath, grasps at Dean’s shirt again. His eyes are wide and wet, and words pour out of him in a frantic rush.

“Dean, did they ever hurt you- were you ever-“

Dean knows where _that’s_ headed and fuck _no_ , he’s not letting Sam go there. It’s bad enough that Sam had to discover this whole clusterfuck at all without him thinking _that._

“No. Sam, no.” Dean cuts him off, pressing his hands against Sam’s chest. Sam just looks down at him with tears caught in his lashes and his lip trembling. Dean grits his teeth, forces himself to continue, if only to wipe that look off Sam’s face.

“There were a few times… a few guys who tried to- to get rough.” One particular memory splashes itself across his mind’s eye in burning technicolour and Dean’s spine stiffens involuntarily. “I knew what I was getting myself into. Kept a knife in my jacket. Gun in the back of my jeans sometimes.”

Dean doesn’t tell Sam how the fourth time a punter had _gotten rough_ , the guy had throttled him until he’d nearly blacked out. How he’d got Dean’s jeans and underwear around his ankles before Dean had been able to get at his knife. How he’d thrown up in an alley after he got away, hidden in baby’s footwell and cried into his hands, shivering and alone and sucking harsh breaths through the bruises on his throat. How he hadn’t been able to bear _anyone_ touching him for weeks.

He’d passed his shying away from people and the raspy voice off as a touch of flu to a questioning Sam. Hid the bruises behind scarves and high neck jumpers and turned up coat collars and made fake-cheerful complaints about the cold.

John hadn’t asked what was wrong.

He hasn’t even told Cas about that. Cas must know, he’s been inside Dean’s head often enough to have seen every miserable millimetre of his history in close-up detail, but the idea of giving it voice makes Dean want to crawl out of his skin.

Sam must see something of it in his face. He shakes his head again, tries to pull Dean back into a hug. Dean flinches away, memory grating his skin too raw for touch.

“Sam.” He warns hoarsely.

Sam drops his encircling arm, but he keeps his hold on Dean’s forearm. His fingers have latched so tight Dean wonders with grim humour if they’ll bruise. And wouldn’t that be the worst kind of irony, for Sam to leave bruises in the wake of his attempt to soothe Dean’s scars.

“I don’t…” Sam says hesitantly, his fingers not hooked on Dean’s arm twitching uselessly. “I don’t… you must have done that for years Dean. For _years._ I don’t know… how did you _make_ yourself _,_ how did you so many times- I- fuck, Dean, I don’t…”

Dean looks up at Sam properly for the first time since he pushed them into this whole hellhole of a conversation. Sam has to know, how can he possibly _not_ know that answer to that question, not know that there was never a choice in this for Dean? But Sam’s face is genuinely confused, brows drawn close and mouth turned down at the corners, and something like hysteria flutters in the hollow carved under Dean’s ribs.

Sam clearly isn’t expecting Dean to answer though, because he keeps on talking, hand waving in the air again as if trying to give shape to his thoughts.

“And then you just- fuck, you just did what? Put it all in a box and let it fester in the back of your mind screwing you up for a couple of decades?”

“It didn’t _screw me up_ ,” Dean mutters, despite the shake in his legs and the quaver in his voice branding him a liar even as he bristles.

Sam looks down at him with an expression somewhere between exasperated and devastated.

“Dean.” He says quietly. “The whole reason we’re having this conversation is that you didn’t let yourself openly want another man for nearly thirty years.”

Dean can’t help but sag at that. He slumps further down the wall, weighted down by the undeniability of that single fact. He’s always known it’s true, that no matter how much he might protest it’s been twisting him up inside since he was a kid, but that doesn’t make the taste of it being forced down his throat any less bitter.

Sam’s grip finally looses from Dean’s arm. There’s another pause as Sam runs both his hands through his hair and Dean tries to piece himself back together enough to let go of Sam and push himself upright without crumbling apart again.

“What’s different now?” Sam asks eventually. “With Cas?”

Dean blinks. What’s different? What kind of dumb fuck question is _that?_ What’s _not_ different about Cas? Cas is nothing like- could _never_ be _anything_ like-

His absolute horror at the suggestion must show in his eyes because Sam interrupts his train of thought.

“No, Dean, I mean you- you didn’t even really let yourself look at another man all those years. But with Cas you did, you let yourself fall in-“

“Don’t say that.” Dean hunches forward. “Not after asking me- making me talk about – don’t _say that.”_

“Okay. Okay.” Sam soothes. “I just mean why did you decide to… let that part of yourself out again, after such a long time?”

Dean flounders in the face of the question. What answer can he possibly give that isn’t just _because it was Cas?_ Cas isn’t the only man he’s been attracted to, not by a long shot, even if he’s the only one he’s wanted for a long time now. But he just… he met Cas and fell so fast and so irrevocably it was like stepping off a bottomless cliff. The wind of freefall whipped away any resistance he ever tried to put up. He’s never thought about the _why_ of it.

But now he _does_ think about it, the answer is as obvious as if it’s written in neon letters a foot high.

“He never asked me for anything. Eleven years, not one fuckin’ thing. Even when…” Dean realises his hands are trembling. He wraps his arms around himself, grips tight into his sleeves to still them. All it does is send tiny shocks reverberating up into his shoulders. “Even when he told me, he didn’t expect anything back.” _The one thing I want._ “Was happy just to say it out loud. Hell, he thought I didn’t…” Dean scrubs a hand over his face, “thought I would never feel that way.” _I know I can’t have._ “It was. He always let me.”

Dean’s throat closes up. He jerks his head, an abortive shake. It shouldn’t hurt like this. They have Cas back. He’s a minute’s walk down the hall, sprawled out across Dean’s bed – _their_ bed - with his pyjamas rumpled and hair askew and his nose stuck in some dusty tome, just waiting for Dean to come in and press his face into Cas’ neck, run his hands up Cas’ thigh until he drops the book and grabs hold of Dean instead, or just flump down beside him, pillow his head on Cas’ stomach and doze while Cas reads, free hand smoothing gently over Dean’s hair. It shouldn’t rip his skin, crack his ribs and flay his heart open. But still, every last time, the memory of those moments in the basement crowbars open the well of guilt and loss and longing and raw grief that’s sunk in his chest and drowns him in the flood.

Sam understands though. Mind-reading freak when it’s Dean’s mind laid open, Sam _always_ understands.

“He let you choose.” Sam says, soft and sure.

Dean closes his eyes. Nods once.

Cas let him choose. Cas waited _eleven fucking years_ for Dean to get his shit together and make his choice. And that whole time he never expected anything, never asked for anything, not even friendship, not even to be allowed to stay, let alone the kind of unflinching devotion he’d offered Dean from the first as though it were the easiest thing in the world to give.

Dean will never know how he can even start to show Cas how much that means.

Sam’s fingers touch lightly on Dean’s elbow again.

“Dean?”

Dean shudders, opens his eyes. Sam is watching him. His eyes are wide and wet, cheeks stained and red, but even so he’s smiling through the tremble in his lip.

“Dean, I-“ he says hesitantly, fingers twitching against Dean’s elbow. “I know you- you’re gonna need some time to be okay. And you’re probably never gonna let me talk to you about this again-“

Dean chokes a tiny, wild laugh and Sam’s smile wavers at the edges. Still, he ploughs on.

“But you know I _am_ always here for you to talk to. Not just about this, about anything.” Sam squeezes Dean’s elbow one last time and drops his hand. “Anything at all.”

Sam’s face is so earnest, sincere in that wet-eyed, set jaw way he’s had since he was a kid. Dean knows he means what he says, knows he should nod and accept it. But how is he supposed to take that offer when it took him eleven years to open his heart even to let love out? It’s not like he can just sit down in the library with Sam and pour out his pain and grief, all his fear and anger and regret out onto the floor like so much spilled whiskey for Sam to mop up with an understanding smile.

So Dean lifts a shoulder in acknowledgement, not saying no but clearly not saying yes either. He can see Sam’s disappointment in the slight droop of Sam’s back, but he’s too weary to care. All he wants to do is flee to his room, flee to where Cas is and just curl up beside him until the icy pain memory has frozen into his ribcage melts under warmth of Cas’ glow.

“I’m gonna…“ Sam touches his fingertips lightly to Dean’s shoulder. “I’m gonna go to bed now. I think you should go talk to- are you going too?”

The almost spoken question is so loud behind the voiced words Dean nearly manages to smile.

“Yeah.” He forces out. “Yeah, I’ll. Yeah.”

Sam smiles a bit, turns away. He hesitates as he goes, turning back to look at Dean as if he’s afraid Dean will stay here all night, pinned to the wall. But eventually he does leave.

Dean lets him disappear around the curve of the corridor, counts out enough interminable seconds for Sam to make it to his door, to go inside and be distracted by Eileen’s welcoming grin. Then Dean bolts for his own room.

***

Dean pauses in the doorway. Cas is there on the bed, just as Dean pictured him earlier, sprawled over the turned-down duvet with his hair uncombed and nose stuck in an enormous leatherbound hardback, wearing a ratty old t-shirt and the ridiculous pyjama pants with bees on that Dean bought as a joke and Cas immediately started wearing constantly.

Just looking at him makes Dean’s throat close up.

Dean hasn’t made a sound, but Cas still looks up. He’s smiling until his eyes fix on Dean’s face. Then the smile slips instantly, concern overwriting his features.

“Dean?”

Cas is up off the bed and across the room before Dean can do more than draw in a shaky breath.

“Dean, what’s wrong?” Cas cradles Dean’s face in his palms. He’s so close his forearms brush Dean’s chest and Dean can smell the fresh, raw scent of him. Something like pine and the electric taste of air after a storm, cloaked in the human normality of clean clothes and coffee and Dean’s shampoo.

Dean brings a hand up and wraps it around Cas’ wrist. His fingers are trembling. Cas doesn’t break eye contact, but Dean knows he feels it when his mouth sets firm.

Cas smooths his hands over Dean’s shoulders, down his arms to close around his elbows. He tugs gently, guiding Dean towards their bed. He keeps his gaze fixed on Dean’s face the whole way, eyes so warm and blue Dean feels too jagged to be allowed in their presence, too much a splintered glass edge against such gossamer softness.

Dean keeps hold of Cas’ wrist. Under his fingers Cas’ pulse thrums steady, a living counterpoint to the unsteady waver of Dean’s own heart.

Pressing Dean down on to the bed, Cas lowers himself to sit beside him. He angles himself into Dean, close enough their knees bump, takes Dean’s hands and holds them wrapped in his own on his lap.

“Dean.” Cas tilts his head to the side to look Dean up and down. The movement is so achingly familiar Dean’s eyes burn with sudden tears. “Dean, what happened?”

“I… I…” Dean swallows hard. His fingers clench involuntarily in Cas’ hold. Cas brushes his thumb over Dean’s knuckles and Dean focuses on that, on the steadiness of Cas’ hands on his to ground himself.

“Sam made me tell him.” Dean has to whisper it. No matter what he tries, his voice won’t come out louder than the quietest breath. “Tell him what I- what I did. When we were kids. For money. So he- fuck. Fuck, Cas, I can’t say it again, don’t ask me to-“

Cas leans forward suddenly, presses his forehead against Dean’s, and the words die on Dean’s lips. Cas doesn’t have to say anything for Dean to know that he understands. The fierce grip of his hands around Dean’s, the sudden angry flash in the depths of his eyes, are as clear as any words.

“I’m sorry, Dean,” he says, vehement, and Dean knows he’s doesn’t just mean for Dean’s pain in this moment.

“Sometimes still feel like I’m…” Dean looks down at their hands, feels the imprint of decades old touches on his fingertips, in his palm. “Dirty. I guess. Like I shouldn’t be touchin’ you ‘cause I’ll just… I’ll. I dunno. Contaminate you or something.”

Cas pushes himself up so he’s kneeling on the mattress next to Dean. He leans forward, takes Dean’s face in his hands and pulls Dean inexorably round to look him in the eye.

“This is something that _was,_ Dean,” he says gently. “It happened. It made its mark on you. But it didn’t _stain_ you. It has nothing to do with this. With us. What we _are_ , right now. I know what you are to me, and that could never be damaged by anything you did a long time ago.” Cas pauses, smoothing his thumbs over Dean’s cheekbones, and smiles a tiny bit. “Especially not something you did out of love.”

The softness of Cas’ smile cracks Dean’s heart with a love so fierce it’s pain. He slumps forward, hands clenching in Cas’ t-shirt. Cas catches him, cradles the back of Dean’s head with one hand, and Dean exhales long and shaky. For a long moment Dean just feels Cas’ heart beating against his ear, breathes out the fumes of poisonous memory, breathes Cas back in.

“Keep waiting to go back there,” he confesses into Cas’ shoulder. “While we’re… keep waiting for something to snap and put me back there and I’ll freak the fuck out.”

Fuck, he hates sounding this vulnerable. This weak. Even when it’s Cas.

Cas just rubs his back and nods. His hair tickles Dean’s ear.

“You won’t,” he says with absolute confidence. “Not with me. I know you deeply enough to know what I _shouldn’t_ do to you just as well as what I _should.”_

The words sink in slowly, settling in Dean’s heart to define the shape of something Dean hadn’t even realised was happening.

How Cas never comes at him from behind, specifically from behind his right shoulder.

How Cas will wrap his arms around Dean’s neck to pull him close, kiss his throat and run his fingers down from ear to collarbone all the time, but any time Cas has him against a wall he never touches Dean’s neck at all.

How Cas will card his fingers through Dean’s hair when Dean’s got his mouth on him, but he never grabs hold, never pulls, never pushes himself in.

Something in the deepest recesses of Dean’s memory cracks open. It spills out hands on his throat, drunken breath in his ear, fingers hard and aggressive in his hair, words - _lookit you, with your pretty face-get those pretty lips workin’-show me those pretty eyes-_

Cas always says he’s beautiful, but he’s never once called him pretty.

Dean’s heart feels like it might swell and burst his chest. His throat burns fiercely and his breath snags, tripping on the sudden ache in his lungs.

He wants, he _wants_ to tell Cas how grateful he is, how much he needs what Cas quietly gives him. The desire is tangible in his chest, a solid presence on the back of his tongue. But he can’t begin to find the words to express the scope of that gratitude, anything of the way it’s sunk so deeply into his soul he doesn’t think he can ever untangle it from his existence.

So instead he just pulls Cas in closer, hugs himself harder into Cas’ chest, mumbles Cas’ name once into the warm, dark space between them. He’ll never have the right words, but sometimes he thinks Cas’ name alone is enough to say everything that he means.

Cas hums almost inaudibly, kisses Dean’s hair and leans his head on Dean’s. They stay that way, Cas’ arms tucked protectively around Dean’s back, until Dean completely loses track of time, the only marker the regular beat of Cas’ pulse and the soft rhythm of their breathing.

Eventually he finds himself slipping into a doze, his death grip on Cas’ shirt loosening and body slumping even further, and Cas finally stirs.

“We should go to bed Dean.”

He pushes Dean gently, hands slipping over Dean’s back to hold his shoulders. Dean blinks and scrubs his eyes, nodding blearily. He pulls himself upright, turns to look down at his feet. He needs to change, and the first step in that has to be taking his boots off. But his feet are so far away and he can’t find the energy to lean down and wrestle with his laces. He rests his elbows on his knees and stares stupidly at those laces, wondering if he can just flop down and sleep fully dressed. It would be far from the first time.

Next to him Cas chuckles a little.

“Here.” Cas touches his wrist softly, then slips off the bed. “Let me.”

Cas kneels in front of Dean to take Dean’s boots off. He bows his head over his task and the glow of the single lamp casts the shadows of his eyelashes long over his cheeks. Dean looks down at him, watches the light glide golden across his cheekbones, the shifting shade in the hollow of his throat as he tips his head to the side.

Cas pulls Dean’s socks off along with his boots. He leans over to drop the socks into the laundry basket, then places the boots by the desk where Dean normally leaves them. He takes a moment to nudge them straight and tidy with his knuckles and something about the knowing domesticity of that brief action finally soothes the anxious churn in Dean’s chest to a low tremble.

Turning back towards Dean, Cas rises up on his knees until they’re face to face. He rests his palms lightly on Dean’s chest, fingertips brushing the buttons of his open flannel. One of his hands slides up to catch onto Dean’s collar and tug the tiniest bit to the side. Cas tips his head fractionally. The movement is so small it could be inconsequential, but Dean recognises the question in it. The careful _is this okay_ formulated to blunt the jagged edges of him, to salve the raw hollow in the pit of his stomach.

Dean closes his eyes and nods. Cas immediately slips Dean’s flannel down his shoulders and works him out of it. He moves on to efficiently pulling Dean’s t-shirt off, but as Dean’s head pops free from the material, Cas leans forward and kisses his forehead. He lingers against Dean’s skin and runs his hand down Dean’s naked spine, pressing kiss and hand so hard against Dean’s skin it almost hurts.

The sudden desire to touch Cas blooms in Dean’s stomach. He curls his fingers in, cradles the fragile seedling of need in his palm as Cas helps him into a clean t-shirt and eases his jeans down. Cas’ touch is so gentle on his bare legs that Dean nearly collapses into him then and there, but he digs his fingernails into his palms until the cut of pain is sharp enough to keep him upright.

Only when Cas has finished shuffling Dean into a worn set of pyjamas and has climbed back onto the bed next to him does Dean open his palm and let the vines of that want twine around his whole body. He turns and collapses gently onto Cas, arms coming up around Cas’ waist and pulling them together. Pushing his face into the soft cotton of Cas’ t-shirt, he leans his whole weight into Cas until Cas huffs under his breath and lets them fall backwards onto the mattress. Cas wraps his arm across Dean’s shoulders in turn and rolls them, pulling Dean with him until they’re lying how they always do when they first go to bed, how they always wake up every morning, face to face in the middle of the mattress, tucked close together with every limb tangled inextricably around each other. Cas’ free hand fumbles somewhere down near their knees to snag the duvet and blanket, pull the covers up over the two of them and hide them in a refuge of softness.

“Okay, Dean.” Cas whispers. It’s not a question, but it’s not a statement either. The way Cas breathes it, quiet and calm into Dean’s lips, here where there’s only the two of them to witness it, it feels like a vow.

Dean tangles his fingers in Cas’ t-shirt, hides his head under Cas’ chin. His nose presses into the line of Cas’ collarbone and he breathes deep on the soft, clean scent of him, on shower gel and laundry detergent and warm skin.

Cas hooks his leg over Dean’s knee, tucks his bare foot into the back of Dean’s calf and pulls them tight together. He rests one of his hands on Dean’s side, thumb smoothing over jut of Dean’s hip. His other arm is trapped under Dean’s head, so he just curls his hand up to comb idle fingers through the downy hair behind Dean’s ear.

Dean closes his eyes. Their room is a bubble of gentle quiet, the only counterpoint to the silence the low tempo of their breathing. Dean focuses on matching their breath. He counts the beats of each inhale and exhale until they’re in perfect rhythm, automatically follows when Cas’ breathing slows and lengthens as he dips into sleep. The hypnotic chant fills his head, tamping down the hissing whispers snaking up from his memory.

He’s so sunk into the repetition that it could be minutes or hours before a stray sound pierces his focus and jerks him back to the present. A door closes somewhere, then footsteps pad down the corridor past their room. It must just be Sam, the footfall too heavy for Eileen, but for that first second as Dean comes back to himself it could be anyone, anonymous footsteps following him in the dark.

Dean bites his lip, suddenly painfully awake. The darkness feels oppressive, tangibly heavy on his skin, and he ashamedly wishes Cas had left the lamp on.

Dean tips his head back a little to look up at Cas. The light creeping under the door from the hall grants the barest illumination that catches on the contours of Cas’ face, outlines the shape of him in tones of deepest midnight. Cas' breath is soft and even across Dean’s cheek. His arm lies lax over Dean’s side, fingers loosely looped into the hem of Dean’s t-shirt.

“Cas?” Dean whispers.

Cas doesn’t respond. His breathing stays steady, ghosting over Dean’s face in unbroken rhythm. Dean slides his hand up to brush his fingers along Cas’ jaw.

“Cas, I-“ He swallows. “You know I’m bad at this. Fuck, I’m bad at this. But.” He touches his fingertips softly to the curve of Cas’ lower lip. “I- I just- thank you. For- for letting me chose. For waiting for me. For sticking with me after… even though I, after everything I-“

Dean’s breath catches on the inhale. Cold leeches into his lungs. His fingers tremble finely.

Cas stirs. He doesn’t wake, but his brow creases. Mumbling something incomprehensible, Cas rolls a little further onto Dean, the leg slung over Dean’s knee tightening to tug them even nearer. His arm under Dean’s head tenses slightly, his hand coming up and fumbling into the neck of Dean’s t-shirt to latch on the bare skin of Dean’s shoulder.

“I’m okay.” Dean’s voice shakes. He rests his palm on the side of Cas neck, breathes in. Out. Tries again. “I’ll be okay.”

Cas sighs in his sleep. His frown clears, but he keeps his tight hold on Dean, body canting forward and arms holding them so close Dean is almost entirely cocooned in Cas.

Dean slips his hands under Cas’ t-shirt, up his back to press his palms onto Cas’ shoulder blades. Cas snuffles a contented noise into Dean’s ear that drops a pearl of hazy warmth straight into the centre of Dean’s chest. It glows there, slowly thawing the icy tremor from his bones with every easy rise and fall of Cas’ ribs against his own.

“I’ll be okay,” Dean repeats.

And here, blanketed in Cas’ body, with Cas’ hands on his skin, in the bed they’ve chosen to share, for the first time in a long time, he actually thinks he might be.

**Author's Note:**

> Challenging myself to write something that's not just entirely soft this time, but even then the ending had to be gentle. Apparently the Cas in my head won't let me hurt Dean without also letting him fix it.
> 
> Stealing titles from LOTR speeches now because Galadriel is a goddamn badass.


End file.
